How it all started

The now self sustaining phenomena grew beyond the device that had birthed it, swallowing it whole. The wind whistled as it was sucked into the vortex, which must have opened into a vacuum. The crowd began to panic as it began swallowing nearby equipment, power cables and just about everything else within fifty feet to the front of event horizon. Many panicked as I remember one onlooker proclaim the creation of a singularity and the end of the world. Many others simply had no idea what was happening, unfortunately neither did the Colberg scientists. Then all at once it was quiet, the wind settled, things stopped getting swallowed and everything got calm, real calm. The swirling vortex was still there and well over a two hundred feet from side to side. It was the strangest phenomena I have ever witnessed it was strangely two dimensional. I recall standing to the side, quite a ways away, and noticing you couldn't see it from behind at all and from the side only the glow that emanated from the event horizon; however from the front it was visible and appeared to have three dimensions in our space.

The brief calm was abruptly interrupted by something inexplicable, it reversed. Not by sending back the few pieces of equipment it swallowed. Something much more terrifying came through; a sort of thick darkness began to emanate from the phenomenon. It was a strange intangible darkness blocking out the daytime sun, creating a moonlit night. The region of darkness grew rapidly covering the assembled crowd and beyond to the horizon. With it came strange changes to the surrounding desert. Trees that were not there before appeared, so did swamps, insects, grass, and many strange sounds. The smell of rotting vegetation and swamp gases filled the air as people ran in all directions attempting to outrun this new terror, as I could hear scientist and layperson alike begin the panicked talk of divine retribution and a gateway to demons. The moon was up, or at least a moon, not like ours, it was as if I was standing on another planet. Panic and fear, often makes otherwise rational people think irrational thoughts. I myself wondered briefly if I had been drawn into the vortex and emerged on some faraway world millions of light years from Earth. As I began to take a more careful look at my surroundings I began to realize this was still the Arizona desert, sort of, and I was probably still on Earth.

Suddenly, I was aware of someone grabbing at my arm...

Read the rest of the origin story in the

APOCalypse 2500™ Main Rule Book

Friday September 13th 2115 09:30 hours PST...The day the world changed.

I remember thinking what a nice morning it was, just a few clouds in the sky and a cool breeze across the desert. I also remember the excitement that filled the air as hundreds of VIP's and reporters from around the globe looked on as the technicians made the final preparations to switch it on. At first nothing much happened, the device began to glow as power surged through the superconductive ring. In the center among stray electrical discharges and flashes of color a tiny black spot began to grow and grow. As the apparition formed colored streams of light began to course inward and out. A snake like tunnel of light was beginning to form; it must have been a wormhole because it certainly matched the computer predictions, at least in this beginning stage it did.

After about thirty seconds of operation things began to go wrong as the power requirements turned out to be well beyond predicted levels. Circuits began to overload as the wormhole began to lose stability as if it was going to collapse all together, this is when they made their mistake. The signal was given to switch in almost one million kilowatts of auxiliary power provided by an off-site reactor. As the new energy surged through the massive secondary supply lines and transformers the phenomena stabilized momentarily than began to grow. They immediately cut the auxiliary power but to no effect; somehow the growing vortex had found another power source.